I know that Prince Philip was from the royal family of
Greece and Denmark.
Does his descendants, Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward, have any royal titles to the Greek/Danish royal family.
Or did Prince Philip when he married Princess Elizabeth, and she became Queen and he became Prince Consort loose his greek titles.
Answers please, or links to websites that can explain, been watching and listening E!'s Royalty A-Z and they haven’t explained this.
Are there still Royal families, when William and Harry are trying to find someone to marry, I am sure the Queen and Prince of Wales will insist on them marrying a royal.
As for number two, I doubt Charles and his mum will insist on Wills and Harry marrying royalty. I think the English royal family is slowly realising that this IS the 21st century and insisting on marrying within royalty isn’t really feasible. I mean, not even the Japanese Imperial family insists on it anymore.
Even if Charlie and Liz DID insist on it, Wills seems like the type that would tell them to go jump.
As for part one, you can find a genealogy of Philip here: http://members.surfeu.fi/thaapanen/s059.html
Philip was a grandson of King George of Greece, but he is so far removed from the succession that there would have to be a Plague for his children/grandchildren to inherit, plus Princess Anne waived any titles for her descendants anyway. The family is much more closely related to the thrones of Denmark and other nations through Elizabeth courtesy of Queen Alexandra (which also brings in the Romanov connections).
A principality that the royal family of England has some claims to that they don’t stress much is Hell. One of their ancestral lines, the Angevin Dynasty (Counts of Angou, through which the Plantaganet Henry II was heir) very proudly traced their ancestry to a daughter of Satan. She was charming six 1/2 days per week, but after dark on Sundays she was a serpent from the waist down; according to legend, when her husband, Fulk, forced her to take communion she transformed into a demon, scooped up her younger children, and flew away. This might explain why QE2 never allows photographers into her bath.
Another interesting thing about Philip, incidentally: he didn’t speak to his sisters for decades and they weren’t invited to his wedding. They were married to high ranking Nazi officials and this was a bit of an embarassment to a man seeking a union with the British royal family, that Blitz thing having not done much by way of PR.
That’s true for commoners and aristocracy, but not for royals. In times past, Victoria was married to Albert who held several Belgian titles (just as Victoria’s half-siblings were both British and Belgian aristocrats), the Hanover kings were all simultaneously German and British nobles, and in the more distant past Queen Mary I of England was married to King Philip II of Spain with each holding numerous titles in the other’s realm.
Philip is a descendent of the Romanovs himself-through his grandmother, Queen Olga of Greece, who was a Russian Grand Duchess and a granddaughter of Nicholas I.
His mother was a German princess, a daughter of Louis of Battenberg and Victoria of Hesse Dharmstadt. Victoria’s younger sister was the last Empress of Russia.
Queen Alexandra herself had no Russian blood-her sister, however, married the Tsarevich who became Alexander III and gave birth to Nicholas II.
Hmm. That must be a 20th century change- probably a WWI addition.
Alexandra’s father, Christian IX, was an interesting dynastic recidivist. Not since the Renaissance era Habsburgs had there been such a genius for marital alliances.
My understanding is that Philip was essentially a penniless courtier prior to his marriage. I know that there was much annoyance at Elizabeth’s choice at the time of the marriage; I actually have tabloids from the late '40s deriding the choice of “a penniless Greek for our Lilibet”.
If I’m not mistaken, there’s never been Russian blood in a western European monarchy, has there? I know that some of the Holy Roman Emperor’s had Russian wives, but generally religious differences forbade the marriages in later centuries, though quite a few Tsars married western royals who converted to Orthodoxy.
There are accounts of Nicholas II’s courtiers arriving in London and crying with relief when they saw George V, because his resemblance to his first cousin was so great that they thought it was the Tsar. George V was also a first cousin of the Tsaritsa Alexandra, though the Tsar and Tsaritsa were not related except through marriage (his uncle was married to her sister; they met at the wedding).
Correction to previous post:
Melusine, the daughter of Satan, did the disappearance at the raising of the host, but wasn’t half-serpent. That was her mother-in-law (but then whose mother-in-law isn’t?).
IIRC, Prince Philip renounced his other titles on being married to Princess Elizabeth in 1947. In fact, he ceased to be a prince at all for ten years, until he was made a Prince of the United Kingdom in 1957.
It is unlikely that the Queen and Wales would try to force Prince William to marry a royal, or that they could get away with it if they did try. Wales married a commoner himself. (True, the marriage was a bit of a disaster, but that’s not the point.)
There’s an argument to be made that a bride who was from a Royal background might have a more realistic understanding of what to expect from a dynastic marriage, I suppose. But, in any event, there’s a limited number of Protestant Royal families, and presumably an even more limited number of Protestant princesses (or princesses willing to become protestants) of the right age, so that may dispose of the issue.
While yes, there is very little Russian blood left in the Romanovs, they are still considered to be Russian.
And yes, actually Nicholas and Alexandra were related by blood-his grandmother, Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna was a Princess of Hesse and the sister of Alexandra’s grandfather: they were second cousins.
Philip did in fact renounce all of his Greek titles, but not to marry Elizabeth. He renounced them previously, in order to join the Royal Navy. There was some anti-foreign feeling in England at the time, and Philip and his uncle, Lord Montbatten, were afraid that the press would raise a stink. So Mountbatten invited the editors of all the big papers to drinks at his apartment, introduced them to his handsome nephew, who had attended school in England, spoke perfect English, and was wearing a midshipman’s uniform that he was entitled to from his schooling, and asked if they had any objection to Philip making a career in the Royal Navy. They could hardly say they did, and Philip duly changed citizenship, renouncing all his Greek titles, without a press outcry.
It was after this that he got engaged to Elizabeth.
From what I understand, technically, any royal requires the crown’s permission to marry before they are 25. Thus, if she really wanted to, Elizabeth could stop her grandsons from marrying anyone, royal or not.
Beyond age 25, the royals do not need permission to marry.
